Waste district board sets vote on new recycling incentives

The Regional Recycling and Waste Reduction District Board decided Thursday that it will vote in January on a new recycling-incentives program that is projected to cost about 10 percent of the district’s budget and aims to include all Pulaski County residents.

The state agency also known as the Pulaski County Regional Solid Waste Management District had an incentives program for all curbside recycling customers in Little Rock, North Little Rock and Sherwood from April 2012 until the middle of August, when the district’s board voted to cancel it.

In September, the district put out a request for proposal — an invitation for companies to bid on the next incentives program. The program, according to the request, would cost between $100,000 and $150,000. The district’s budget is about $1.3 million in fiscal 2015.

District Deputy Director Carol Bevis said the new program ideally will be expanded to all county residents — including those without curbside recycling — and schools. People without curbside service would merely report having recycled, and rewards would not be based on the amount anyone recycles. Ideally, Bevis said, more local businesses would participate in offering those rewards in the new program compared with the last one.

Bevis said getting involved in schools is “critical” for the district.

“That gets the students involved; that gets the parents involved,” she said.

The district received bids from five companies: First Class Communication, J. Kelly Referrals and Cranford Co., all of Little Rock; Recycling Perk of Chesapeake Va.; and Rewards for Recycling of Davison, Mich.

The district and Kansas City, Mo.-based engineering firm Burns & McDonnell have reviewed the proposals, but Bevis said they will not make any recommendations unless instructed to by the board.

A new incentives program comes as the district has seen a slight decline in curbside recycling participation this year.

When the district, along with Little Rock, North Little Rock and Sherwood, started single-stream recycling in April 2012, 80 percent of about 92,000 eligible households had signed up and agreed to pay $2.67 per month for the service. Single-stream recycling refers to the ability to dispose of all recyclables in the same container instead of having to sort them beforehand.

The curbside recycling participation rate more than doubled after single-stream recycling was introduced.

That 80 percent figure held steady until 2014, when it dropped to 75 percent of eligible households. That percentage remains the same, even several months since the end of the Recyclebank rewards program.

“This is the lowest it’s been since single-stream recycling,” said George Wheatley, public-sector services manager for Recyclebank partner Waste Management.

Curbside recycling rates vary nationally. Cities such as Indianapolis and Buffalo, N.Y., have rates lower than 20 percent for curbside recycling participation, according to the Indianapolis Star and Buffalo-based Investigative Post. Columbus, Ohio, is at 70 percent, the Star reported.

Just 20.8 percent of eligible curbside recycling customers signed up for the Recyclebank rewards program that lasted 2½ years. The rate was consistent with Recyclebank’s participation rate in other cities, Wheatley said in August.

The district did not have to pay for the program during its first two years of operation but was set to pay $134,063 this fiscal year, the same year it dropped a $135,000 program for recycling drop-offs.

After the Recyclebank contract’s cancellation, officials did not want to pay for the cost of the program from April 2014 until the middle of August and chose to hold the money in escrow in case the company sought action to force the district to pay.

The district is now proposing paying $43,000 to Waste Management, which partners with Recyclebank, toward its outstanding bill for the program. The district board approved the expenditure Thursday.